This is the main board on The Outhouse, where Outhousers talk about everything. No topics are off limits, and it doesn't have to be about comics. All the topics from the other boards also show up in The Asylum, so you never have to leave1

Definitely not as great as the hype:I'd heard best marvel individual movie to date: No. Iron Man 1 was better, not even sure I'd put it above some of the others.I'd heard the big finale fight was as big as the Avengers finale. No, not even close.

One thing I think hurt the movie was everything was given away by trailers. There was never one moment where I was thinking "this is awesome" while getting chills. Unlike Avengers, where it was going on every scene almost. The pepper finale was fine, just had no real impact.

Something about the pacing of the movie was weird to me. It seemed rushed. Too jokey, even for Iron Man. The phone call to Iron Patriot while he was holding the room at gunpoint and he stops and turns was kind of stupid, like he can't take a call and talk without turning his voice off from the armor or needing to turn away and put his hand up. I get what they were going for, but made no sense. Most of all, I really wasn't liking Tony Stark too much in this movie, normally his antics are amusing to a degree, his quips witty, but here they often came off as annoying and not too clever.

The ending really killed it for me though. The fight was ok, but I don't think the various armors got highlighted very well for the short time they were in a scene, half the time I could barely see what was going on. The extremist was way too overpowered, they tore through the armor like nothing most of the time. It's as if, if Tony hadn't had fifty suits, he'd have zero chance of doing anything to one of them. The Iron Man armor just came off as weak.

Let's see, the second time we've seen the gov't let some other company do something with War Machine and it turns out bad, maybe they just let the guy who designed Iron Man handle stuff for WM and go through Stark's company or something in the future.

The Mandarin reveal was cute I guess. I had no real attachment to the character not being an Iron Man comic reader. But it did seem a waste of a big IM comic villain. Can't say I cared either way personally though, but it was amusing and god knows the movie was trying really hard to be amusing.

But, when I say the ending killed it, I'm talking about after the big fight. All the IM armors destroyed. Pepper gets fixed up, off screen, no problem, even though what was happening to her/them was a major part of the story. Then, not only that, but Tony Stark is fixed up as well, no more arc reactor needed, all that wasted screen time from the first two movies worrying about his arc reactor could have been fixed by a single surgery after he got back from the cave.

And the after credits scene was boring to me. One, making the audience sit through the WHOLE credits instead of just the first title sequence before the main credits roll is only going to make it need to be that much better. But it teased nothing. They are not working on a Hulk movie that I know of, plus we've already seen Banner anyway, it's not a tease or reveal. It was cute, don't get me wrong, (remember how hard they want to be amusing), but it wasn't anything that got the audience hyped about the next marvel project. Considering how much we know of what they are working on, actually teasing something would have gone a long way. They could have touched on Cap 2, Thor 2, GoG, even Ant Man though its far out, or at least addressed some of the changes Stark had been through and what it meant to the character. To me, it just piled on a bit more disappointment at an already lackluster ending.

All that said, I didn't hate the movie. I was just focusing on issues with it in my post. It was still enjoyable. But I wouldn't care if Shane Black had little to do with the next movie.

What didn't work...Too much of the kid.Too much of the armor and or armor pieces being able to fly themselves cross country (really, the face plate had enough fuel to fly 800+ miles (without hitting any planes, trains or automobiles (or innocent people) as they traveled).The Mandarin reveal. I got a Batman Begins/Ra's Al Ghul vibe early on, so the truth about Ringo was a let down.Pepper surviving was likewise telegraphed the moment she 'died'.The armors targeting high heat signatures was cool - but they all conveniently stopped the moment the RDJ and Pierce fight began (and then there's the one going after Pepper when Pierce was glowing much hotter).'Clean Slate'The end credits scene

What did work...The cast lead by RDJ (which was acted with enough fun to overcome the list above).

-Why didn't Tony have a simple surgery to repair the arc reactor in Iron Man 1? Well because he needed the modified Extremis to survive the surgery, this was pretty obvious as he just explained that he fixed the procedure for Pepper.

-Mandarin was wasted? Um not really Guy Pearce was the Mandarin, he even said so during the final battle.

-Guy Pearce breating fire? Kind of wonky I guess, but it was played for laughs obviously. I thought it was funny and I'm glad it didn't pop up anymore.

-Loved his tatoos near the end of the movie.

-Clean Slate was important to Tony because all those suits of armor represented the darkest time of his adult life. They were his "cocoon" while he dealt with his PTSD from New York, it was a symbolic gesture on his part. And since he basically has a bottomless bank account I doubt he's too worried about replacing them if the need arises.

-Sorry amoebas but worrying about how the bits of armor traveled 800 miles is kind of fan nitpicky. You're dealing with a character that created the most sophisticated weapon in human history from missile parts while working with a broken heart in a cave for 3 months. Is it really that unreasonable to assume that this character created a suit that could do that kind of stuff?

Gotta say my opinion of this movie is very high, I thought it was hilarious, some of the best insight into Tony's character in any of the movies, some of the best action in the series, heads and tails the best villain, and the absolute best use of the supporting cast to date. It gets a 10/10 from me.